Laser Squad Nemesis

Laser Squad Nemesis is the latest incarnation in a continually evolving franchise. Players play against other gamers using e-mail style moves where you plot out your strategy and execute your moves. Since it's a turn-based game, and you only move in 10-second blocks, the game is geared heavily to trial-and-error, and cautious exploration. Of course, if you're playing against a veteran, then you could easily be railroaded.

With a fairly short and detailed tutorial, Laser Squad Nemesis allows you to chose from four warring races. The human Marines, the mechanical Machina, the insect-like Spawn and the alien Greys. The game doesn't really give you much of a background as to why these four are locked in mortal combat, but rest assured, the utter destruction of the others is number one on all of their to-do lists.  Each race possesses different characters and bases for use throughout each mission. These deployments are based on a scale called force points. Since there is a different point value for each character, and you start each round with a set number of force points, it pays to deploy smartly. Sure, it looks impressive to have a ton of grunts (1 pt) standing around looking all bad and such, but one well positioned splatter (3 pts) and your army is nothing but, well, goo.

The game is viewed from a fixed-angle 3/4 view, and features true line-of-sight physics. When you first start off, the terrain is filled with walls and all sorts of other obstacles, as you move your troops around the map and they round corners or enter rooms, if an enemy is there, then suddenly that enemy will appear to you as the player sees it. If this doesn't make sense to you then think of it this way: while playing the map, you can see all of the locations on the map, but if there is an enemy in a room, you won't see them until you send a member of your own force into the room. And even then, if the troop you send in there isn't facing the enemy, you still won't see them. 

When it is your turn, you can choose to move or engage or any other number of commands that you would like to execute, just know that even with you moving many of your team, the commands you issue will only work through the 10 seconds that the game caps moves at. So conceivably you could have a troop walk down a corridor, pause for one second at a juncture in order to scan for enemies and then enter a room. But if the ten seconds elapses and your troop is still walking down the corridor, then that is it. Plus when you factor in emergency orders like retreat upon sight of enemy or fire-at-will once engaged, then your long drawn-out orders can fall apart quickly.

My reviewer copy featured several single-player campaigns that allowed you to play out whole missions much more quickly as opposed to the online multiplayer mode that this game was clearly designed for. I enjoyed the missions and found myself whittling away the evening as I strategized and contemplated my moves three or four in advance.  But like I said before, this game was designed for the online style of play. Load up and register your e-mail within the gaming community and find some opposition. While some players may respond quickly with their moves, others may not get an opportunity for a day or two, so be patient. This is the kind of game that requires as much patience as it does strategy, so put some effort into it, the reward is worth it. 

From a graphical and audio standpoint, the game is just not there. The game has no eye candy and features a fairly remedial look to it. The game allows you to move the fixed-angle camera around the screen and zoom in and out. As I did, I noticed the game tends to start to look blurry and grainy, the edges of the landscape aren't as sharp and I even had a couple of times where I had to do a double take to ensure I was targeting the correct object. The audio wasn't much better, with it's middle-of-the-road sound effects and fairly thin sounding explosions. I guess you could say that they are using both the same audio effect and graphics as its first incarnation made back in 2002.

There is a lot of depth in this title, and strategy too. Certain terrain can be damaged for effect. Each race has it's own versions of HQ's soldiers, commanders and such. Of course each race also possesses special abilities that allow for fresh gameplay. My personal favorite is playing as the Spawn and having the spawn queen eat the corpses of the marines. It allows her to lay eggs and hatch more spawn units. Cool.

Gameplay: 8.0
An easy to use, but full-of-options-style interface that leaves a lot of play options. I enjoyed the back-and-forth chess-like action.   

Graphics: 6.5
Blunt, unfriendly looking and dated. The game's graphics haven't changed in three years and it clearly shows. For as much fun as the game can be, I wished the developers would have put some more effort in to the looks.

Sound: 5.7
Again, dated and plain sounding, for as varying as the character classes were, some strong independent sounds would have been great. It just didn't happen. 

Difficulty: Medium
It can be really hard if you play against a skilled player, but that also depends on your skill level. The preloaded computer scenarios were fairly well rounded.

Concept: 8.5
I love the way this title set up its online play using turns within e-mail communication. The perfect online game for people with really slow internet connections. Nice.

Multiplayer: 9.0
Darn near perfect for what the game involves. You will develop some serious online rivalries if you put forth the effort. Please be courteous of others and win/lose graciously. 

Overall: 8.1
If the graphics and audio were sharper, this could have been an editor's choice, it's that fun. But given that it is a value-priced game, the spit and polish isn't there, too bad though, this game is addictive.